Shakespeare
in London

By 1592
Shakespeare was a playwright in London and had enough of a reputation for
Robert Greene to denounce him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with
our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes
he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and
beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely
Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies the phrase,
"Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare
wrote in Henry VI, part 3.)

In 1596
Hamnet died; he was buried on August 11, 1596. Some suspect that his death
was part of the inspiration behind The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark (c.1601), a reworking of an older, lost play (possibly Danish
play Amleth or Thomas Kyd).

By 1598
Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and
appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every man in his Humour written
by Ben Jonson.

Shakespeare's
signature, became an actor, writer and finally part-owner of a playing
company, known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men — the company took its
name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic sponsor, the Lord
Chamberlain. The group became popular enough that after the death of
Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I (1603), the new monarch adopted
the company and it became known as the King's Men.

In
1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal
documents from 1612, when the case was brought to trial, show that in
1604, Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot
tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwest of London.
Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Belott wanted to marry Mountjoy's daughter.
Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, to help negotiate the details of
the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years
later, Belott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the
dowry. Shakespeare was called to testify, but remembered little of the
circumstances.

New
Place, Stratford-on-Avon, built on the site of Shakespeare's homeVarious
documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that
Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London years to buy a
property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in
Stratford, New Place.